A Healing Grace
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM preslash, oneshot. After the war, it takes a while for Harry to care about Quidditch again. And he certainly never expected Draco Malfoy to be the most interesting part of it. COMPLETE.


**Title: **A Healing Grace

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Pairing: **Harry/Draco (preslash), Ron/Hermione

**Rating: **PG

**Warnings: **Angst, profanity

**Summary: **After the war, it takes Harry a while to start going to Quidditch games again. And he certainly never expected that the most interesting part of them would be Draco Malfoy.

**Wordcount: **4700

**Author's Notes:** This was written for duchessa, who gave me the prompt of "unexpected talent." Thank you for the holiday gift, sweetie!

**A Healing Grace**

"It's going to be brilliant, mate. The Cannons are going to knock the Falcons out of the _sky._"

Harry had to smile despite his uncertainty about being here. Ron was always predicting a Cannon victory, apparently under the impression that his words ought to produce a corresponding reaction in the world. It hadn't happened yet, but each time, he would mope slightly and then look forwards to the next time with undiminished hope.

Harry leaned back in his seat, absently crunching the Chocolate Frog he'd bought when they came onto the pitch, and looked around. The fans of the Cannons and Falcons were clearly separated, but even if they'd mingled, Harry thought he could have picked the separate groups out out; they had a tendency to wear the colors of their teams, wave banners with pictures of their favorite players, and yell insults at each other. At the moment, people on brooms who looked big enough to be reserve Beaters were swooping down on a scuffle in the stands opposite them.

"Honestly," Hermione huffed as she squeezed into the seat next to Harry. Pregnancy made it a little harder for her to maneuver, and she grimaced and touched her belly now in a way that let Harry know the baby had kicked again. "Why some people can't just _enjoy _their hobby instead of getting so worked up about it…"

"You mean, the way you enjoy arguing for house-elf rights?" Ron asked, with an innocence that Harry wouldn't have dared use.

Hermione would have had to reach across Harry's shoulders to hit him. She settled for glaring instead. Meanwhile, Harry was watching the players form up into their teams, soaring and circling in ways that brought a lump to his throat.

It had taken him a long time to start thinking about Quidditch again, and even longer not to feel guilty when he did. People had _died _in the war. Teddy was an orphan. Wasn't it more important to think about that than a hobby where people chased a tiny golden ball on brooms and swatted other balls back and forth?

Finally, though, Harry had listened to Hermione's advice about rationing out his guilt and not thinking that he _had _to be miserable because some of his friends were dead. That didn't leave him any time to enjoy those who were still alive. He'd thought about that for a week and managed to accept it.

Hence this Quidditch game.

Harry learned forwards, trying to ignore the way the Cannons wallowed in the sky next to the sleek, circling Falcon players. The one in Seeker's leathers was particularly graceful, like his team's namesake, dashing back and forth in playful little strikes that made it obvious how much speed he could muster when he wanted.

Then he turned broadside to the sun, and it fell on his pale hair at the same moment as Harry's mouth fell open.

"That's Malfoy!" he hissed at Ron.

"Yeah, I know," Ron said, surging to his feet to hoot and clap for the Cannons Seeker, who bowed from his broom and nearly went over the front of it. Hermione snorted loudly. Ron seemed more interested in glaring at her than answering Harry's question. "I told you he was Seeker for the Falcons, didn't I? Yesterday. Or last week."

"No, you bloody well didn't!" Harry knew people were turning their heads to stare at him, but he didn't think he could keep his voice down. He hadn't thought about Malfoy at all since he sent his hawthorn wand off to him, and here he was, dancing above the Quidditch pitch as though he hadn't a care in the world.

"Well, it doesn't matter, because—"

Harry would have liked to hear Ron's explanation for why it didn't matter, but just then the whistle blew, the balls flew up from the ground like suddenly released birds, and the game began.

And Malfoy dazzled Harry.

Harry sank back in his seat, his mouth open, as he watched Malfoy lean to the left and steer himself down in a series of increasingly graceful curves. From that, he rose in a vertical mount that left the Cannons' Seeker floundering helplessly behind him. Then he tipped to the side, wobbled as if in uncertainty—Harry wondered how many people watching would actually know that it was skill, nothing else, producing those tiny movements—and shot to the right. The Cannons' Seeker followed him.

And it was all a feint, because Harry's eyes had caught the gleam of gold that traveled towards the far side of the pitch. He was sure Malfoy's had, too.

He was magnificent, far more magnificent than Harry had ever dreamed he could be when they were students together.

And all throughout the game, he was like that. His movements were smooth and sweeping and swift, or cut short with a carelessness that showed he'd chosen to do that. Malfoy's arms worked in harmony with his legs, and the broom might have been a second wand that obeyed his will more perfectly than the original. His Falcon robes flapped in the high winds that regularly blew across the pitch, but never obscured his vision. He stooped like a hawk, turned like an eagle, and clutched the Snitch, when he found it, like an osprey. The Cannons never had a chance against him.

When the game finished, Harry's throat was aching and his eyes hurt from staring unblinking through the harsh beams of the sun. He lowered his head and massaged his face, his fingers feeling unexpectedly _real _as they poked at the corners of his eyes.

"It _was _a game, wasn't it?" Ron asked, pounding him on the back and shocking Harry awake from the feverish dream that Malfoy's movements had landed him in. "And never mind that the Cannons lost," he added loyally. "They'll do better next time."

"Not while Malfoy's playing, they won't," Harry murmured, his gaze locked on Malfoy's form as he flew triumphant rings around the Quidditch pitch, tilting his hand back and forth so that the sun glowed from the captive Snitch in his hand.

Malfoy happened to turn his broom to the side just then, and caught his eye. For a moment, he gaped, his face less attractive than it was in his mask of victory. Then he sneered and tossed his head, as if daring Harry to glare at him.

Harry smiled.

Malfoy stared at him with paling cheeks, then turned and flew down towards his team's showers. A collective groan escaped the audience, except for Hermione, who was standing up with a sigh of relief.

"And that's the end of _that_," she said. "Let's go home."

"I saw him looking at you, mate," Ron said under his breath to Harry as they began to thread their way out of their seats. "What did you do?"

Harry shook his head. "Nothing."

And that was true. Malfoy must receive thousands of smiles a day. Harry had no thought that his expression was anything more than an unexpected tribute.

But Malfoy's flight was more than that to him, and now he knew it.

*

"I'm glad to see you taking an interest in something, Harry," Hermione said, putting her hand over his tickets to the match between the Falmouth Falcons and the Westgate Winged Horses. "But really, Quidditch?"

Harry grinned at her, and shrugged, and pulled his hand away, and kissed her on the cheek, and went to the game. If he didn't hurry, he would be late.

He hadn't missed a single game Malfoy played in since the one with the Cannons. He would have watched the practices if he could, but he couldn't have done that without getting special permission, and the only way he could have got that was based on his name and scar. Harry didn't want to use them. He only wanted what the rest of the public had: access to see Malfoy fly and dodge across the sky, and, every time, capture the Snitch, while making his opponent look like a hippo in the air.

However, the flight didn't mean the same thing to those other people that it did to him.

It was the flight itself, and not the victory, that had made Harry think about something other than grief. Malfoy looked as if he knew exactly what his body was capable of, and then he pushed it further than that. It was grace. It was beauty. It was a blessing that Harry felt silly for experiencing that way even as he knew his life would be poorer without it.

_Well, I can be silly all I like, _he thought defiantly as he settled into his seat on the left side of the pitch. _After all, it's my private secret and hurts no one._

But apparently someone had decided that it hurt them, because a burly man Harry had never seen before came up to his seat then, bent over him, and murmured, "The team captain has asked you to leave, sir."

Harry leaned back and blinked up at him. "I don't remember speaking to him." He knew Malfoy was the captain of the Falcons, because he had learned everything there was to know about Malfoy by then.

"You don't understand," said the wizard, who looked as though he spent his days training criminals to fight and then training the Aurors who fought _them_. "This is the request. It can be repeated in a harder way if you'd like."

Harry frowned but stood. "What have I done?" he asked, as he let the wizard herd him gently towards the entrance.

"You make the captain nervous," the wizard said promptly. "You attend every game, and everyone knows that you were rivals in school. Word is that you might curse him."

Harry turned back to gape at the man. Of all the consequences that he had thought attending Malfoy's games could have, that had never been one of them. "I wouldn't," he protested. "There are other fans who attend all the games, and no one bothers about them. I'm exactly like them."

The wizard's dark eyes flicked up to the scar that rested under Harry's fringe. "With respect, sir," he said, "you're not exactly like anyone else."

Harry turned away, his fists clenched at his sides and his stomach tight with anger. Always the war came back and haunted him, this time because he hadn't had the good fortune to be born someone who could cower on the sidelines or just fight and be an ordinary war hero.

_I reckon I should have expected this, though. No matter how beautifully Malfoy flies, he really hasn't changed a bit._

*

"What's this?"

Harry looked down, startled, and then hastily sent his broom soaring towards the ground. Hermione, standing beneath him with little Rose in her arms, raised an eyebrow as he landed in front of her.

"It didn't look like this when I visited a fortnight ago," she said mildly.

"I know." Harry scratched the back of his neck and wondered if he should look sheepish or defiant. "But I wanted to do _something _after they banned me from attending Malfoy's games, and this was the best thing I could think of."

Hermione looked around again, and this time Harry looked with her, trying to see it through her eyes. He supposed it would look rather strange for someone with no foreknowledge of what he was doing.

He'd transformed the lawn behind his house into an improvised Quidditch pitch. Of course he'd had to leave off most of the special additions that the proper fields and the Hogwarts Quidditch pitch were decorated with, but he had the short grass, the Keeper's hoop, and the circle in the middle from which the balls would be released. And he had enchanted mockups of the Bludgers, Snitch, and Quaffle, too, padded rocks which flew with minds of their own thanks to a few simple spells. And he had his broom. Once he got in the air, that was all he really needed.

"I don't know, Harry," Hermione said slowly. "At one point you were obsessed with the war and the dead, and then with Malfoy, and now with Quidditch. I don't know if it's healthy."

Harry smiled at her. "If I have to be obsessed with _something_, isn't it better that it be something like Quidditch that I can practice on my own and that doesn't hurt anyone?"

"Except you," Hermione muttered. Now she was looking at his enchanted stones in disgust. She handed Rose to Harry, who accepted her gingerly, and then waved her wand. The rocks trembled and changed into real balls. Hermione looked back at him and tapped her wand against her hip. "A bit of simple Transfiguration."

"You know I was always bollocks at that kind of thing," Harry said, and handed Rose back. "Thanks."

Hermione rolled her eyes, but she was smiling as she walked away. Harry jumped onto his broom again and started hurtling around the Pitch. At first he was afraid that the new balls wouldn't retain the spells he'd put on them, but he was relieved when one of the Budgers nearly caved his ribs in.

As he pivoted and turned and plummeted, the image of Malfoy's grace was in his mind. He could never hope to match it. He had a talent, but he hadn't undergone the right kind of training, and Malfoy was years ahead by now, practicing every day.

But Malfoy wasn't competition anymore. He was an inspiration, and Harry thought of him as he flew, and smiled as he thought of him.

*

"What's _this_, Potter?"

Harry, who'd caught the Snitch while hanging upside-down from his broom and was feeling a bit smug about that, nearly lost his grip. The last thing he had ever expected to hear in his own little makeshift pitch was _that _voice.

But no matter how hard he stared at the opposite side of the lawn, the side near his house, he couldn't change the vision. Malfoy stood there, one hand on his hip, and there were no bodyguards or trainers or hovering reporters around him.

Wary, Harry landed a good distance away and wiped sweat off his forehead. Of course, that made no difference since sweat immediately slid down again from his hair, but it made a slight difference to _him_. "It's my own Quidditch pitch," he said. "What does it look like?"

"Pathetic," Malfoy returned with a smart rap in his voice, and Harry had to admit he'd set himself up for that one. Malfoy might have come here only to say that. But he didn't move, and a line furrowed his forehead. "What, are you thinking you can become me?" he asked.

"No," Harry said. "You have a lot more skill and training than I ever did."

Malfoy swaggered a step closer, his eyes so intent that Harry almost turned around to see if the Cannons' Seeker was behind him. "You can admit that?" Malfoy asked. "When you had a natural talent at Hogwarts? I remember all the exclamations. You were the youngest Seeker in a century, while I had to wait another year." His voice dropped, as if the memory still had the power to choke him with rage all these years later.

"That was when we were kids," Harry said. "I didn't keep up with it. Didn't practice." He started to say that he'd practiced other things, and then chewed on his tongue to make himself stop. What would be the point? Malfoy knew about those other things. The whole world knew it. It wound sound like bragging to repeat them now. And Harry wanted Malfoy to think well of him. "You did. You're the top-ranked Seeker in England."

Malfoy calmed, even preened a bit, but was still staring at him suspiciously. "It seems a bit much that you came to my games, then you took your dismissal so well, and then you built a Quidditch pitch in your backyard," he said.

Harry threw his hands up. "What do you want, Malfoy? I liked the way you play. I liked the way you _fly_. And I only left the games because I was told I had to. What did you want me to do, yell so that you could hear me in your practice sessions?"

"The Harry Potter I knew wouldn't have taken that so calmly," Malfoy said.

"The Harry Potter you knew is dead," Harry said, more harshly than he meant to. Studying Malfoy and the way he walked, he could see a shadow of the grace he had missed since the bodyguard had kicked him off the pitch.

Malfoy rocked forwards on the balls of his feet, arms held straight at his sides, mouth slightly open to accommodate his fast breaths. "Stop being melodramatic, Potter," he whispered. "Everyone lost people in this war. Everyone fought—him. Or at least they ran in fear or only did what he said because they were afraid, if they weren't utterly worthless. You're not unique."

"I know that," Harry said. "I'm ashamed how long it took me to recover."

Malfoy snorted and tossed his head. "If you want to challenge me, that's fine. Let's fly." He plunged his hand into his robe pocket, and Harry tensed, but he pulled out a shrunken broom instead of a wand. It grew back to its proper size as he held it balanced on his palm. Harry recognized it as the broom that he used in regular matches, marked in spiral lines of the Falcons' colors.

"I don't want to challenge you," Harry said, holding still in the hope that that would keep him from sending whatever signals Malfoy was misinterpreting.

Malfoy raked him with a contemptuous glance and shook his head. "The Harry Potter I knew wasn't a coward, whatever else he was," he said. "I refuse to believe that that much of you could have died. Let's fly."

"Do you have a little box in the back of your throat that spouts off that line whenever you feel threatened?" Harry snapped. _Fine, fuck trying to be patient and reasonable. _

"That's more like it," Malfoy said, through a smirk, and then the broom was on the ground and he was in the air, so fast that it was like trying to follow the dive of a peregrine hawk with his eyes alone for Harry.

Harry shook his head and rose a few feet from the grass. He couldn't follow Malfoy, and he didn't try. He flew low, lazy circles instead and counted under his breath, wondering how long it would take Malfoy to realize that he was alone.

Two minutes. Then Malfoy peered down—Harry could feel if not see the way his eyes squinted against the wind—and drawled, "Are you going to let me win by default?"

"Nothing to win," Harry called back, with a shrug. "I just like to watch you fly, and you're fulfilling that function admirably."

Malfoy dropped in a series of graceful zigzags that he'd probably perfected trying to escape from opposing Seekers, and which made Harry have to swallow and blink away stupid, nonsensical tears as he watched. Malfoy was hovering in front of him a few seconds later, his face white and intense.

"Fly," he whispered. "Or do I tell everyone that Harry Potter was too afraid to even _try_ to win a private match, one where the only point is to see who catches the Snitch first?" He leaned forwards, over his broom, and his breath caressed Harry's cheek. "I want to see how well you've learned to fly, too, over the years. Whether what you could do in Hogwarts was just a fluke, or not."

Harry felt himself flush painfully. Malfoy's threat was idle. Harry knew that no one who mattered to him would believe the accusation of cowardice, and their various reasons for disappointment if he didn't challenge Malfoy, he thought he could bear.

But the thought of possibly gaining Malfoy's approval made him nod and float closer, even as he told himself it was just a ruse and Malfoy would sulk and rage if he lost and gloat if he won. "You're on."

Malfoy laughed, a hard, steely sound, and then jumprf upwards. Harry flew to join him, feeling as if they were attached with a pair of ropes, like winged horses bound together to learn to draw a carriage.

Aloft, it soon became possible to tell who had wings and who didn't.

Harry was good. He knew that. He had known it ever since he felt the broom spring into his hand and he had dashed into the sky—after Malfoy, who'd stolen Neville's Remembrall. Nothing you weren't good at _felt _that good.

But Malfoy had taken talent that Harry secretly didn't think was that far behind his own, and built on it, and shaped it, and sharpened it, and honed it by playing every day for several years. Harry had started to think that even the time he spent on the ground was playing, in a way, because from the way Malfoy moved, his mind remained on the broom.

So he soared rings around Harry, and Harry had to smile, because the pleasure of seeing him that way outweighed the certainty that he was going to lose. Malfoy shot him a scornful glance with one eye, as if to say that the smile was stupid because he couldn't think of a reason for it.

Then he flew upwards, vaulting into the sky against the sun as if it was his native country. Harry had to shade his eyes to see him. He didn't care. Malfoy was a spectacle, a show, and he used his skill in the same proud, cruel way that a hawk did.

He flew twice after the Snitch where Harry flew once. He hovered like a kestrel, not because he needed to but because he was showing off. And he cast Harry constant swift glances, checking on him like a falcon watching its handler.

But he was all the better when he lost himself in the flight, bent over the broom, reeling sideways in impossible maneuvers, wheeling across the sunlight like a self-willed cloud. Harry watched, and felt the sight reaching down into his soul, deadened with too much war and death. At one point, he had felt that all the people gone from the world, people who couldn't see it anymore or be with the family they loved, meant no beauty was left. But there was. The world went on, not stopping for one death.

This was the first time that Harry had rejoiced in that knowledge, instead of mourning it.

Malfoy could fly. No grave would change that fact, no burial, no marker that Harry visited obsessively, no orphaned godson. Harry didn't think that Malfoy was somehow _beyond _those things, because he knew Malfoy had his sorrows just as Harry did: a father in jail, a mother who'd been forced to flee England because the Wizengamot hadn't protected her well enough. But he was part of the same world, and Harry's grief had to deal with the beauty just as Malfoy, with all his skill, would have had to deal with the grief.

Harry could at least appreciate the gift he knew Malfoy was happy to demonstrate and stop acting as though his life had stopped with other lives.

Malfoy snatched the Snitch and barrel-rolled to celebrate, over and over, in a pattern that caused Harry to laugh aloud, because he knew there was no chance Malfoy would fall, because he knew that Malfoy wasn't holding back and hadn't tried to coddle him by letting him win the match because he was worried about Harry's "fragile state of mind."

Malfoy hovered down in front of him, so precise that Harry could almost see the flutter of wings around his ribs. "Why are you laughing?" he demanded. "Did you cast a spell on me to make me lose? Is my hair pink now?" He crossed his eyes as if were trying to see his hair past his forehead and his nose.

Harry shook his head. "I was laughing with joy," he said. "It's an emotion you may have heard. But perhaps it's unusual for you to inspire it." He smiled at Malfoy and waited to see how he would respond to that.

Malfoy blinked a little. Then he said, "You're laughing because I won?"

"Got it in one." Harry reached out, without thinking of his own daring until the gesture was complete, and brushed his fingers across the outer strands of Malfoy's hair. "God, you're beautiful."

Malfoy lowered his eyes. "I'm not going to let you into any more games," he said, but his voice shook.

"I know," Harry answered. "But you can't take away my memory of how you flew this afternoon." Then he decided that he should keep his eyes on Malfoy's hands, just in case he decided to test that statement and tried to cast a Memory Charm on Harry.

Malfoy blinked at him some more. Then he said, "You mean it. I really think you mean it. I'm not a good judge of what people mean or whether they're sincere, but you were always rubbish at hiding things, anyway. You're smiling. You look as though you could meet my eyes and my demand for compliments." He sat silent on his broom, staring at Harry all the time, as if he expected him to melt or change or run away.

Harry waited patiently, one hand on his broomstick. He had to exert that amount of control. Malfoy didn't have to. His movements to hold still were as unconscious as those of a bird alighting on a branch.

"I could use someone like you," Malfoy said.

"To tell you how you're flying?" Harry asked. "Don't you have many fans who can do that?"

"They look at me like I was famous," Malfoy answered, and there was bitterness in his voice, bitterness that sounded as if it had spent years struggling to rise to the surface. "Not like I was beautiful."

"Would you rather be beautiful than famous?" Harry asked curiously, because if someone had asked him, he thought he would have answered for the second desire being Malfoy's most prominent one.

"I'd rather be both," Malfoy said. Harry could hear the _of course _that floated between his words, and suppressed a smile. "But I have lots of people to remind me of one, and no one—except you—for the other." He hesitated, then added, "Perhaps we can come to an agreement."

He reached out his hand. "Praise me, and you can come to my games," he said, as if he were making a demand and not a concession.

Harry, smiling into his eyes, didn't care. Yes, it was shallow and superficial and many other condemning adjectives, but he didn't think that mattered, because the important thing was that it was _different _from the war and the deaths he'd spent so long brooding over. Other people were moving on with their lives, and their concerns had sometimes seemed trivial to Harry. Why shouldn't he be allowed to have his?

And he wondered, from the way Malfoy's eyelids trembled as he looked sideways at Harry and his fingers clenched and flexed inwards to the palm, if it would always be trivial, if there wasn't something else that might come along in time.

"Yes," Harry said, reaching out and clasping Malfoy's hand. Malfoy looked at him as if the feel of Harry's skin was a revelation. "I will."

"Start now," Malfoy said insistently, pressing down on Harry's hand.

It wasn't a very promising beginning. Or so said Harry's common sense and the vain sneer on Malfoy's face.

"You make me feel as if I'm _alive _when I see you fly," Harry said. "For the first time since Hogwarts."

Malfoy looked down, and the light flush on his cheeks brought some of the grace of his flying into his face.

_But many things have a less promising beginning than in beauty._

**End.**


End file.
